Airbus -'Son of Concorde' Patents Filed
Discussion
I can't quite make out why they would bother with a patent. Marketing perhaps?
To get a patent it has to be more than an idea; the patent has to provide sufficient detail for someone else to make it. And for such a monumentally expensive project, there can't be many companies who would wish to bother. Indeed, such an undertaking could only possibly be undertaken by a global alliance. And even if someone did produce an aircraft with similar properties, I doubt very much Airbus could defend this application given the 'state-of-the-art' and prior art present now.
And a patent lasts 20 years. This won't fly in 20 years, yet alone someone bothering to go to the expense and risk of copying it.
The idea of Mach 1 vertical ascent does seem like fun though!
To get a patent it has to be more than an idea; the patent has to provide sufficient detail for someone else to make it. And for such a monumentally expensive project, there can't be many companies who would wish to bother. Indeed, such an undertaking could only possibly be undertaken by a global alliance. And even if someone did produce an aircraft with similar properties, I doubt very much Airbus could defend this application given the 'state-of-the-art' and prior art present now.
And a patent lasts 20 years. This won't fly in 20 years, yet alone someone bothering to go to the expense and risk of copying it.
The idea of Mach 1 vertical ascent does seem like fun though!
Why is a supersonic biz jet really that much of a leap? There's a number of planes flying/have flown sucessfully over the last 60 or so years (generally bombers) that could form the basis of one- didn't the ruskies have plans for a VIP passenger version of the MiG-25?
What would it cost- £100M? even at £200M I'd wager there'd be a market- look at the number of widebody "private jets" with price tags and running costs that'd exceed that.
Maybe an issue over some joe public being able to make sonic booms wherever they like or maybe terrorists having a plane that can outrun air force fighters? generally they don't worry about any of that until after it's happened though.
What would it cost- £100M? even at £200M I'd wager there'd be a market- look at the number of widebody "private jets" with price tags and running costs that'd exceed that.
Maybe an issue over some joe public being able to make sonic booms wherever they like or maybe terrorists having a plane that can outrun air force fighters? generally they don't worry about any of that until after it's happened though.
hairyben said:
Why is a supersonic biz jet really that much of a leap? There's a number of planes flying/have flown sucessfully over the last 60 or so years (generally bombers) that could form the basis of one- didn't the ruskies have plans for a VIP passenger version of the MiG-25?
What would it cost- £100M? even at £200M I'd wager there'd be a market- look at the number of widebody "private jets" with price tags and running costs that'd exceed that.
Maybe an issue over some joe public being able to make sonic booms wherever they like or maybe terrorists having a plane that can outrun air force fighters? generally they don't worry about any of that until after it's happened though.
Boom is one significant issue- the current rules don't allow supersonic civil aircraft over the USA for example, due to the boom. So one important leap is to demonstrate acceptably low boom followed by lobbying for a rule change. Other significant issues are operating cost (a supersonic engine of today's technology has lower propulsive efficiency than a subsonic engine) and safety.What would it cost- £100M? even at £200M I'd wager there'd be a market- look at the number of widebody "private jets" with price tags and running costs that'd exceed that.
Maybe an issue over some joe public being able to make sonic booms wherever they like or maybe terrorists having a plane that can outrun air force fighters? generally they don't worry about any of that until after it's happened though.
V8LM said:
Although had Boeing managed to get SST into production then things may be different.
A big problem there was they decided that as Concorde would have been in service for a while before they got anything airborne they needed to go faster and aim for Mach 3, but just didn't have the technology to do it. They'd have needed to make the skin of titanium rather than aluminum like Concorde. Had they settled for a lower speed they'd probably have been able to get it built as a Concorde rival.That was the genius of Concorde, taking existing technologies as far as they would go, beyond which costs rise exponentially. In engineering it is easy to get carried away and push and push and push, going for ever more extreme performance. When you have constraints it suddenly becomes much easier.
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